My Journey Around The World – Philippines

Here it is, my weekly diary journey around the world, week 3 (since I started writing it), in Manila, Philippines.

When I was a kid I used to keep a diary. I would write down there ALL my thoughts, the most stupidest of all even. At one point, when I started using more daily a laptop, tablet, phone, I stopped writing there.

Now I am starting again, writing a diary. It’s about traveling the world and what my experiences are of places. Also, I write down recommendations for places to visit, stay,eat, see, anything really 🙂 Hope it will be useful to some, I started off with Bali because frankly I had no idea what to do in my blog in January this year, and I was moving around to a different country every week or two, so it was a bit hard to stay consistent with content.

Last week we said our goodbyes (for now) to Bali, and said hello to Manila. If you will ask me how is Manila, my answer’s gonna be “a concrete jungle”. But even as much concrete and giant as it is, I still made a really cool video about it. And after all, each place has a story. A vibe, people who give a place its uniqueness.

We took this week to work on our blogs/vlogs, and our businesses. So we are staying in an Airbnb and working from a cafe next to our residence. Our Airbnb this time had no free wifi, it’s the first time actually we’ve had an Airbnb with no wifi, but the internet in the Philippines is not great. We stacked up our SIMs with internet, you can get a SIM with 50 php ( I use Globe) and then top it up with let’s say 350 php. 1 GB is about 50 pesos. Staying in Manila is pretty cheap, and you can even get a 4 star hotel for about 1000 php/night.

My Weekly Diary – Journey Around The World Week 3 debuted also with an interesting experience. That was taking the train in Manila. First of all, I didn’t even know there is one. Second of all, it was a bit of a bumpy ride 🙂 We needed to extend our VISA so we had to go to the Immigration Office Makati. The procedure is quite simple, and quick. You go with your passport, fill out a standard form, pay the fee, and come pick it up after. It was reaaally hot so we went into Chowking for some rice and chicken and then went back to collect our passports. However, alltogether, this adventure took us up the whole day. The traffic in Manila is a bit hectic. At first, I was thinking about doing my weekly diary journey around the world as more of a travel guide, but I am just going to relate everything we did.

Since we are in Manila, and we had to buy some camera gear (by the way, they don’t sell tripods ?! ), we explored two shopping malls, the SM STA Mesa where we went to watch a movie (Black Panther) and The Mall of Asia. Yesss yes I expected it to be grandiose, with a huge theme park and all fun and crazy stuff. The theme park is small, along the Baywalk, and it was closed. We tried out some of the foods in the food court, and lingered at the pizzas everywhere. And yes, if there will be more pizzas in the next weekly diary journey around the world, I can’t help it!

On Sunday we checked into Novotel Araneta Center to start off our trip with the Giveback Giveaway. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s an AWESOME organisation founded by two great bloggers, Johnny and Josh.

What they do is that they get people on a great trip exploring different parts of the world, but also give back to the community. Meaning that the people on the trip help build classrooms, playgrounds, in poor parts of the world. It’s a beautiful of traveling, getting to know more people and also do something kind.

That’s it for now, check out next Monday to see what Ihave been up to in My Weekly Diary – Journey Around The World week 4!